We Will Reap The Gaza Whirlwind – Brian Cloughley

On اگست 4, 2014 156

Gaza is in ruins as the merciless Israeli blitz has furthered Tel Aviv’s objective of eventual annihilation of all these bothersome Arabs who have the temerity to claim the land of Palestine which they own. The international media, or at least some of it – excluding most of the influential US TV stations and newspapers and most British newspapers – has shown the most appalling scenes of carnage.

The pictures of the corpses of little Arab children who have been slaughtered by Israeli missiles, tank shells, aircraft rockets, naval gunfire (Yay! let’s have a round of applause for the gallant Israeli navy whose intrepid mariners killed four kids playing on a beach), and sundry other explosive terrors are truly heart-wrenching. Not to Israelis, of course, because most of them seem to be utterly heartless: but they are emotionally distressing to anyone who is normal and not intent on genocide.

One first-hand description of the carnage was by a Palestinian writer who describes his experiences unemotionally and with stark resonance. “On Friday night, my friend Hisham, who works at Beit Hanoun Hospital, phoned to say that they had been bombed. Shells struck the x-ray room and the operating theatre. People, patients, doctors, and nurses were all terrified … Old women sit helplessly in the debris of their homes. A few kids can be seen searching for toys. Ambulances and medical teams work through the day to find people still alive under these ruins. Today, some 151 corpses have been found in this rubble. Some of them have started to decay already. You can smell the dead bodies on every corner…One of the corpses found was of a woman: she had been carrying both her children, one in each arm, when the tank shell hit her home. It seems she was simply trying to protect them. She held them tight to her chest, and despite the weight of the masonry she never let go. What they found under all that concrete was like a still life, apparently a photograph, a perfect composition.”

“A perfect composition.” Yes, that sums it all up. Perhaps a sculptor could take up this idea, because a statue – a monument – a massive shrine – depicting that murdered trio of innocents could stand forever as memorial to the evil that is Israel and the unfulfilled hope of a free Palestine.

US official policy, made clear by a White House statement, is that while Obama “reiterated the United States’ serious and growing concern about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths and the loss of Israeli lives, as well as the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza,” he offered “strong condemnation of Hamas’ rocket and tunnel attacks against Israel and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.”

‘Defend itself’? – By setting in motion a shattering blitzkrieg that has killed over twelve hundred people? As I wrote these words I went to check on the number of deaths and read on Euronews that “As many as nine Palestinian children and one adult have been killed following a missile strike on a refugee camp in Gaza. The children were playing on swings in a play area at the Beach Refugee camp when the missile hit.”

It is officially recognised that “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance…In 2007, the Bush Administration agreed to a $30 billion military aid package for the period from FY2009 to FY2018. During his March 2013 visit to Israel, President Obama pledged that the United States would continue to provide Israel with multi-year commitments of military aid.”

Washington could halt the Gaza carnage instantly if it wished, by cutting off all contact with Israel and stopping every cent of its massive aid. But it won’t do so. On June 30, immediately after the White House lamely complained about the Israeli shelling of a UN Relief Agency facility that killed 15 innocent people the Pentagon announced it was resupplying Israel with ammunition. The US is supporting the war on Gaza.

America doesn’t dare take any action of any sort against Israel’s evil campaign of genocide because almost all federal politicians in the US are recipients of donations from various pro-Israel lobby groups and live in fear that if they support UN Security Council resolutions censuring Israel for breaking international law, then they will lose votes at the next election.

But give them an easy target, like “reaffirming Israel’s right to defend itself” by killing lots of kids on swings, then they’re right up there with the donors. (No; not blood donors.) Like the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg (Jewish) who flew to Tel Aviv last week to “show solidarity with the Israeli people,” and the present holder of that distinguished office, Bill de Blasio, who declared “it’s not only normal and natural [to support Israel], I consider it my responsibility to stand up for the state of Israel.” His moral stance is taken, of course, because “I am the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population anywhere on this earth.” Money talks and votes talk even louder, as they do to the Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, who pronounced that “the people of New York stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Israel.” (Do they really? All of them?)

Then the Jerusalem Post recorded that “members of the US House of Representatives, including the ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Eliot Engel (D-NY), blasted the UN for suggesting Israel had committed and should be held accountable for war crimes.” Then Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) declared that if the United Nations was “thinking of investigating Israel for alleged war crimes, give that up. Give that up.”

One wonders where the final allegiance of such as Mr Engel and Mr Israel might lie. Is it with the United States of America or with the State of Israel? The population of New York State is 20 million. What about other legislators representing America’s 320 million people?

On July 18 it was reported that “Following a similar resolution passed last week by the US House, the US Senate voted to support Israel’s ongoing invasion of the Gaza Strip. No dissenting vote was cast…” There was not a mention of Arab deaths or of the almost total destruction of Gaza, never mind the kid-killing jamborees of the putrid Israeli tank crews, F-16 jet-jockey cowboys and seaborne savages of naval gunfire support.

Given the vociferous approval of Israel’s genocidal terrorism by the entire US Senate there is no hope that Gaza, the Palestinian nation and Arabs of the region can expect justice concerning their plight. The nation of Palestine will never be allowed to exist, which is exactly what Tel Aviv and Washington want. All the UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Israel return Arab lands to Arabs and cease building illegal settlements will continue to be ignored, as they have been for decades.

There is little wonder that young Arabs in Gaza and Palestine are full of hatred for Israel and willing to die for revenge. They have been given good reason to detest America. They have no future in the scattered rubble of their squalid ghettoes. They have no chance to rise out of their enforced apartheid. In their own homeland they are regarded as ‘untermenschen’ – what the Nazis called ‘inferior people’ in Europe. Now, in the eastern Mediterranean, in Palestine, the Israelis are not only the Chosen People (as described in ancient texts) but the superior race which is intent on eradicating those who lived there peacefully for centuries. The young Arabs whose parents and grand-parents the Zionists have dispossessed and cast into poverty see no alternative but to join in the fight against what they regard as evil.

Israel and America have forged a mighty revolution and inspired hatred not only in Palestine but far beyond it. Many more innocents will die around the world, many thousands, possibly, in ghastly versions of the New York 2001 atrocities, murdered by fanatical young men who were never given the chance to grow up as normal people – because they were denied justice, decency and humanity. Israel and America have sowed the wind and will reap the whirlwind. But the rest of the world will pay too – for their arrogance and barbarity.